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Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

thinkfaster.co

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Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#51
"if you take one of the 6 month programs, you’ll get a similar amount of experience as in an undergrad curriculum."

I am sorry, what?

Look, I know that people are all about "disrupting" the world. But, for the love of hard-work and whatever goodness left in your heart, can you please stop insulting people?

I once worked as TA for an introductory class in Computer Science. It takes about a semester for students to wrap their heads about what is "programming." It takes at minimum another semester of honest to goodness to absorb the fundamentals of computer science (incl. formal languages, basic complexity theories, and basic algorithm). It takes at least another semester to work through how the computer (you know, the silicon?) works.

Of course, I have only talked about the theory side the programming world. A good CS program also needs to introduce at least 2 (if not 3: one introductory, one system, one industrial) programming languages, plus at least 3 paradigms (corresponding the languages above: functional, system/procedural, and OOP), plus some discussion over the industry. And they should ensure that the students get stock overflow at least once, infinite loops at least a few times, and (on the verge of?) kicking their classmates/teammates at least once on some stupid bugs.

More challenges: a brain isn't a hard drive. Cramming is about the worst way possible to induce understanding. All of these above need time and space to work themselves through various layers of consciousness.

(BTW, all of the above are just the basics; if you notice, I have not brought up any "sexy" topics like networking or cloud computing or AI or what-have-you)

Imagine for a minute: what happens if a person walks up to newly minted chemical or mechanical or even electrical engineers and tells them that their 4 years of education can be done in 6 months. What would the new engineers think? Well, here is the nice version: such "disrupter" is laughed out of the room. The less nice version involves some honor-defense beating. The pragmatic version probably involves some lawsuits over how such claim is a fraud and may endanger the consumers (not to mention co-workers).

And yet, here we are. Software engineers, who spent years to acquire immensely complicated skills, are forced to sit through and agree with such insults, then to give comments like "oh yeah, maybe you should learn more about big-O notation." You know what I think about big-O notation? It's about as useful as calculus. Remember, doing something twice does NOT cost as much as doing it once (and this is before factor in goodies like cache miss and waiting for OS and whatnots). It's like push-ups: good mental exercise, but not actually used. So, telling someone "you need to learn big-O notation after 6-month bootcamp" is like saying "learn football for 6 months, add some push-ups, and you are ready for NFL." Am I the only one finding this ridiculous?

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#52

My advice for them? Don't tell people you paid for a coding bootcamp. Without fail, every single "code bootcamp" that has applied for a job here has had a horrible resume. They didn't have anything on their resume that wasn't from the bootcamp, and even that was horrible. And they generally failed our "use Flickr's API to get some images" test that we give out. Miserably. I think we ended up interviewing 1 of them, o…

- Why would you expect them to have more than the bootcamp on their resume? Most people don't have prior programming experience, and most bootcamps are demanding, such that they wouldn't have time for side projects. - Is the test using a language they're familiar with? An editor they're familiar with? Is it pair programming, or are they just given a computer and a desk? Are they allowed to use Google/SO/etc? - Why do…

We expect them to be able to code at a junior level. They cannot. I wouldn't even consider most of them for an internship, and the rest only grudgingly.

Yes, I expect them to have more projects in their Github account than just what the bootcamp forced them to do. If they don't care enough about programming to do that, then they probably don't care enough about programming for us to hire them.

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why don't you hire them, make that little investment yourself, and have them fix things they're capable of fixing while they catch up? This just seems like such a small obstacle that the technical parts would end up taking a back seat to other hiring criteria.

Hiring someone who doesn't work out is unbelievably expensive. It can be a disaster for your team. When we hire someone, we have no way of knowing if they'll be the life-long learner type who will aggressively consume new knowledge and learn as much as they possibly can. In other words, we have no way of knowing if we can effectively train them, and it's crazy expensive if we can't. We've tried to hire 1 or 2 of them…

Sounds like you guys should be hiring self-learners. If someone has taken multiples years of teaching themselves from scratch with no CS degree and no bootcamp attendence, they sound like the lifelong learner you guys are looking for.

How often do you guys hire someone who is _neither_ a CS graduate nor a bootcamp graduate?

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#54
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have more opinions on this? I'm a coding boot camp dev with a few years of experience at startups and half of my resume consists of online MOOCS (Udacity's machine learning, Udacity's Linear Algebra, Fast.ai's deep learning, and Cloud Academy's Certified AWS Developer) I'm curious as to what HR from Big Tech companies and small startups think about a resume filled with MOOCs like this.

I don't hire engineers, but I am one. I've never heard this advice about not putting MOOCs on your resume, and if I were hiring, I would likely consider any MOOC (with a decent grade if applicable) to be better than nothing. Can the OP of the comment say more about the reasoning?

Am OP of comment, I believe the reasoning is that the quality of MOOCs varies wildly and there is often no way to confirm that a student actually completed the content or how well they did? Another reason could be that the sheer number of MOOCs that a student might take would just add noise to your resume?

I'm not sure that's accurate, but I've had many people tell me to avoid putting anything about MOOCs on a resume.

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#55

I am a cofounder of a bootcamp (Hack Reactor) that teaches Big O. I believe our average grad knows more about it than I did when I graduated with a CS degree. Some comments: 1. If you're a bootcamp grad, be aware that impostor syndrome / low confidence / "maybe I'll be ready to interview after I take one more class" is a FAR GREATER RISK than not knowing big o. When you read an essay like this, consider it as useful…

Hi Shawn! I think I interviewed with you as a student when HackReactor was calling itself Catalyst. Anyway: > not built at schools except those named waterloo I was in Vancouver once and visiting a friend at his workplace. They mentioned that they hire a lot of University of Waterloo graduates and I asked, innocently, "is that a good engineering school?" I got a blank stare from everyone before they flatly responded,…

Hey there :)

Waterloo does one thing uniquely well: the co-op program [1]. Their grads have a ton of real-world experience before they graduate, which puts them head-and-shoulders above their peers. (This is connected to my broader worldview.)

[1] https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/future-undergraduate-students/co-op-...

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#56

I am a cofounder of a bootcamp (Hack Reactor) that teaches Big O. I believe our average grad knows more about it than I did when I graduated with a CS degree. Some comments: 1. If you're a bootcamp grad, be aware that impostor syndrome / low confidence / "maybe I'll be ready to interview after I take one more class" is a FAR GREATER RISK than not knowing big o. When you read an essay like this, consider it as useful…

100% agree. I would argue Big 0, or [insert abstract CS concept here] is drastically overrated in importance. We're much more interested in someones propensity to learn new skills and curiosity than we are in how closely they align with a traditional CS grad. To be honest, some of the best developers we've hired have had no formal schooling whatsoever.

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#57

My advice for them? Don't tell people you paid for a coding bootcamp. Without fail, every single "code bootcamp" that has applied for a job here has had a horrible resume. They didn't have anything on their resume that wasn't from the bootcamp, and even that was horrible. And they generally failed our "use Flickr's API to get some images" test that we give out. Miserably. I think we ended up interviewing 1 of them, o…

I've found it depends on the bootcamp. There are a select few that do a good job and produce solid junior developers, but the VAST majority are trash and produce developers similar to what you describe.

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Junior developers" in hot markets make six figure salaries. If you could get away with paying $50k-70k to a software engineering trainee and then promoting them after they work out, maybe it would make sense to do that. But if you're going to invest software engineering salaries in a field that doesn't even have the kinds of formal credentialing of similarly-paying fields like medicine, you're not going to risk hiri…

>you're not going to risk hiring someone who's a work in progress and might not even work out in terms of having the basic qualifications. That's what the bloody technical tests are for! If you're giving those out, on top of a technical verbal interview, and still saying "well, we still don't know if they can even build a CRUD app with our stack", you have a broken hiring process! I can understand the difficulty in c…

Yeah, I thought we were talking about hiring people who had gaps in their basic CS knowledge and then training them.

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you're not going to risk hiring someone who's a work in progress and might not even work out in terms of having the basic qualifications. That's what the bloody technical tests are for! If you're giving those out, on top of a technical verbal interview, and still saying "well, we still don't know if they can even build a CRUD app with our stack", you have a broken hiring process! I can understand the difficulty in c…

Yeah, I thought we were talking about hiring people who had gaps in their basic CS knowledge and then training them.

As long as they were otherwise able to contribute to the team, which is what should have been found out in the interview. That's what the boot camps are selling. The gaps in CS knowledge were what the article is saying was one of, if not the, deciding factor in choosing a CS grad over a boot camp grad.

Re: Advice for Coding Bootcamp Graduates

#60
Have interviewed a bunch of bootcampers. Goal is to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Without fail, they lack the fundamental knowledge needed to excel. Not because the classes or assignments are bad, but because there is so much hard-earned experience and "instinct" that only comes with time in front of a keyboard.
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